The Official Blog of the Black Women Losing Weight Community. Tips, articles and weight loss resources for African American Women.
Today’s featured before and after: Nicole lost 80 pounds!
I asked her what she did in terms of eating right and exercise. She said, “I cut out greasy foods & had not so many sweets. I increased the amounts of fruits & veggies I ate. As far as exercising, I did about 45 mins of cardio & 30 mins of toning 4-5 times a week! Pissed me off but I guess it worked!!! Lol”. It sure did, sis. Thank you for sharing your story with us!
Today’s weight loss success story: Angelic has lost more than 70 pounds.
She says,
“My before and after picture! The before is from my company Christmas party 12/10/11 and the after is from 7/4/12. I have lost over 70 lbs the hard way-Eliminating white sugar, flour, bread, pasta, and processed foods. Doing the work—Walking, drinking 1/2 my body weight in ounces of water daily, Eating Salads, Vegetables, Fruit, Lean Meat-Chicken, Turkey, Fish, Whole grains, drinking green tea and VERY limited sweets-(6) vanilla wafers, (4) graham crackers or (8) animal crackers only, once a day!!! I got even closer to God, because I needed Him EVERY step of the way! I’m a Southern Girl that LOOOOOOVES to cook, bake and does it all DIVINELY!!! The sacrifice has been more than worth it! I’ve accomplished getting my body and energy back!!! I am SO addicted to eating right and exercising, which is a place I NEVER thought I would be!!! I get excited just seeing someone jogging down the street! To all that think they cannot do it without surgery, pills and/or potions,–I am living proof that you can!!!! Let’s get it!!!”
Today’s Weight Loss Success Story: BWLW online community member Shalonda G. has lost 107 pounds!
She says,
” I have lost almost a hundred pounds. I was at a family gathering for new years’ eve party, my cousin took a picture of me and put it on facebook. I could believe that was me in that chair. When i start I was 309 pounds and now I’m 202. My goal weight is 170 because I’m 5’9. This is how i started my weight loss plan: I stopped eating fried foods, almost no bread, no sweets including chocolate. My exercise was walking at my local track field, I walked 4 miles a day. After that i did 200 steppers(steps from kitchen to den). When the track closed for repairs, i started walking around my local area. Now i have been going to Bell’s Gym in Nashville, AR. I started on the treadmill doing five miles a day. I am now walking on the ellipctical four miles a day and now im pumping weights and doing stomach exercises. Im Truly Blessed to be able to lose that weight. Thank You GOD for the strentgh to succeed.”
2. You will commit to check-in with your fellow BWLW sisters on our online community each Saturday in November to let us know how the challenge is going for you. You will let everyone know your workout totals in terms of days and hours worked out. You will also note what challenges and successes you’ve had while trying to avoid sugar and white flour. Of course, you’ll also note how your weight is affected by the challenge goals. Check-in with a status message, photo, blog post…it’s your choice. We just want to hold each other accountable. BWLW members will also be posting on our Facebook page.
Bonus Challenge – Juicing at least once per day!
Do you want to step up the complexity of this month’s challenge? Interested in adding juicing to your daily eating goals? Me too. I’ve decided to add at least one 20 oz glass of juice to eating regime each day. There are a lot of free recipe resources online that you can check out. I’ll be using a great collection of 101 recipes I found: “101 Juice Fast Recipes“. I bought it after I saw the juice fasting documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead“. Just $1.01! for 101 recipes from African American Juicing Diva, Carla of Raw Raw Life. Check it out!
Leave a comment below and let me know what your goals for November are and what you’d like to get out of this month’s challenge.
Our book of the month will be “Ada’s Rules” and I’ll be posting book club questions on the blog for discussion for those who are interested.
Ada’s Rules: A Sexy Skinny Novel
Black Women ARE Losing Weight with our monthly challenges! Let’s keep the momentum going in November.
Today’s Feature: Taneka lost 62 pounds going from a size 16 to a size 4.
She says,
“I lost loss weight by eating clean. No beef or pork , low carb intake, and lots of water. No juice or soda nothing but water and green tea. I workout 5-7 days a week at home, bike riding, and about a month ago I started hula hooping. I love it. I have been on my journey for almost 3 years in March. I wanted to take it slow, so i wouldn’t have any sagging skin and its working so far. I have gone from 220 to 158 size 16 to size 4. I’m trying to get to my goal weight, which is 130 size 2. I’m almost there and i wont stop until i get there!!!!! Work hard play hard!”
Update 10/30: Thank you so much for voting in the poll!!! The results are in!!
Original post 10/25 ——————————————————
Ladies, it’s time to weigh-in on what our November Challenge should be. I’ve included 2 book club challenges where we would read along together and impliment the book suggestions as part of the challenge. You will find the poll below.
Ada’s Rules: A Sexy Skinny Novel
Eat to Live – For this challenge we would follow the plan outlined in the book – The Eat To Live 2011 revised edition includes lots of new success stories from readers of the original book, plus a brand new chapter highlighting Dr. Fuhrman’s discovery of toxic hunger and the role of food addiction in weight issues. This new chapter provides novel and important insights into weight gain, and explains how and why a diet of high micronutrient quality leads to the sensation of true hunger and maintenance of a healthy weight. It instructs readers on how to leave behind the discomfort of toxic hunger, cravings, and addictions to unhealthy foods.
Other updates include:
This easy-to-follow, nutritionally sound diet can help anyone shed pounds quickly-and keep them off.
Black Women ARE Losing Weight with our monthly challenges! Let’s keep the momentum going in November.
Today’s Featured Weight Loss Success Story: BWLW Online Community member Lucretia has lost 40 pounds!
She says,
“From last September to this, I have lost 40 pounds through diet and exercise. I feel a lot healthier and I love the feeling of being able to run without pain. I feel successful and am very grateful to my family for the support. I have drastically increased my fruit and vegetable intake. I drink more water and less soda. I am counting calories in vs those expended. I workout at least 5 days a week for at least an hour. My workouts include Zumba, Dvds by jillian Michaels, the biggest loser Dvds, weight lifting, and jogging.” Great job, Lucretia!!! Thank you for sharing with us!
We are sending out BWLW Love to our Featured Success Story of the Day, Amber, who has lost 45 pounds, going from 207 to 162. She’s a mother of 3 as well!!
Note: One of photos is flipped so that the comparison could be the same. She still has the tattoo. This caused some controversy on our FB page.
She says, “I have 3 children ages 8,3, and 17 months. After having my baby u went through a lot dealing with depression and a divorce and gained tons of weight and got up to 207. I wasn’t able to play with kids and do a lot of things because of my weight and the pressure on my bad knees and decided to lose weight after Having to wear my boyfriends clothes. I started in April and started my membership back at the gym and started taking Zumba then got excited and addicted to it and could see it was a great fun workout but wasn’t losing weight then finally the hard part I decided to start Eating healthy and the weight started falling off. I got certified to teach Zumba In may and have been trying to keep up since. Started at 207 and currently 154 but the pics are 207/162 in about 4 and a half months and still trying to maintain. I just live to see African American women getting motivated to lose weight and be healthy.”
Update: I know that a number of your have had questions since the initial posting yesterday so I asked Amber to fill us in on how she lost the belly fat and her Zumba classes.
“I live in DECATUR Illinois and currently teach Zumba at the YMCA there but in time starting workout classes in my new garage. It’s huge and I wanna start classes and use the money to put up studio mirrors in it.
Basically my diet was really bad at first I ate all day long and full course meals twice a day with tons of carbs and drank at least 3 sodas daily. When I decided to lose weight I cute the soda and juices completely and started drinking lots of water and hot green tea and organic tea. I cut the carbs down at least 60% and got rid of fried food all the way also and snacking on candy and chips ended also.
The main things I ate were oatmeal or Special K cereal with skim milk in the morning.
For lunch: green bean, carrots and spinach and grilled chicken breast on the foreman and the same for dinner. Also sometimes I would replace a meal with a protein shake the ones I tried were muscle milk, Special K shakes, slim fast or the myoplex ones. But basically did that for 4 months and that weight came off along with my workout plan”
Today’s Featured Weight Loss Success Story Comes from Starlet who has lost 67 pounds going from 263 to 196.
She says, “I took the picture in the brown Sept.2011, the pic in the black dress was around Feb 2012 and the far right photo was taken about 8 days ago. I started walking back in 2010 (3 miles a day) but that didn’t do much for weight loss it really just gave me energy and though I was still heavy I could walk through the mall or take a flight of stairs without giving out of breath. So in May 2011, I just started removing bread and starch like potatoes and rice from my diet…and after about 3 or 4 months I could start to see some changes..believe it or not that picture in the brown is not my heaviest weight. I weighed in at 272 in 2010 but I can’t find any pic’s of me and I definitely know why (too ashamed) in Nov 2011, I began juicing and protein shaking and in March 2012, I had lost about 30 lbs. This is when I saw significant changes in my health and my physical appearance…so I just started putting a little more effort to losing the weight after that by protein shakes in the morning and light lunches and dinners that do not contain bread, potatoes or rice..that’s it. I walk daily in my neighborhood and just recently got a gym membership. Sept 11′:263lbs and Oct 12′:196lbs. I would like to say thanks for what you do because it is so important to let people know that you can do this…if you put your mind to it. I have struggled with my weight for over half of my life. I have been smaller before (160 lbs about 15 years ago) but being a big girl is pretty much all I know. It’s a constant struggle to maintain low weight especially on a naturally voluptuous women but my pictures are constant reminders that I got to commit to whatever I need to in order to keep myself alive. Thanks”
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Starlet!
Update 2015: Ruth has now lost 181 pounds!!!
Today’s Featured Weight Loss Success Story is my absolute favorite before and after video on YouTube. It’s Ruth aka DivaSlimsDown who has lost over 150 pounds! She has worked her way down from 341 pounds with hard work, working out and eating right. 
Check out her whole weight loss journey on her awesome YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/DivaSlimsDown. You can also find her on Facebook. I love that she is sharing her journey with the world. On her YouTube channel she chronicles her workouts, what she eats and gives vivid details of her journey from 341 pounds. It is amazing the amount of information that Ruth is blessing us with. I found a recent interview she did with 2bfitfabfierce and here’s part of how she lost the pounds:
I drink tons of water. I do not drink any sodas anymore. I eat similar things as before but less of it. I also find healthier ways to make the foods I like. I don’t eat frozen dinners like lean cuisine etc. They have too much sodium. I make sure I’m eating throughout the entire day 5-6 small meals. For example for breakfast I will have eggs and turkey bacon. Next I will have a snack, which can be any fruit of my choice. Then for lunch I will have a chicken salad. I will have another snack of fruit and a 100-calorie pack snack. For dinner I will have chicken breast with vegetables. Then have another snack like almonds or fruit.As far as for exercise in the beginning I could only do 15 minutes of walking 2-3 days a week. As I got more endurance my workouts grew longer. Now I workout 2 times a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. 6 days a week for 2-3 hours a day. In the morning I do a shorter workout, usually a workout DVD that’s less then 30 minutes. In the afternoons I go to Curves and do my strength training and then do an hour zumba class.
Here is one of her most recent videos.
Great job, Ruth!
